No audio, only video on an HDTV broadcast or HD Commercial

This happens quite a bit for commercials. The problem is that the High Definition broadcast is made up of more than one signal; audio and video is actually coming to you, or to your cable company, then you, via separate pathways. The audio actually can be transmitted in several different layers.

If the producer of these commercials doesn’t get the technology just write, you are going to see the picture in HD and no sound, or more often, a picture and only background noises (like birds chirping or something like that).

There is nothing wrong with your TV or your connections. This is a problem with the people who produced the commercial and the people who are transmitting it.

WGME - Channel 13 - Unbelievably bad technical expertise

It happened again tonight, at 8:20 pm. I switched on the TV and channel surfed my HD channels (which I get for free over the air) and low and behold, the only television show available in HD was “The Ghost Whisperer” and low and behold, it wasn’t in High Definition.
As ususal; it’s quite routine by now; I called WGME and told them that their broadcast of “The Ghost Whisperer” was not coming through in high definition. I knew full well that they forgot to “flip the switch”. You see, I’ve done this before.

As I was placed on hold for a few minutes, I watched the picture and all of a sudden, it flickered for a millisecond and started coming out in high definition.

The gentleman I was speaking to came back and I immediately said “Well, you’re all set, it’s coming out in HD” and he said something like “oh good, it is”. And I said “yes, you must have “flipped the switch again” and he said “yes, we flipped the switch” and apologized.

I said “Oh, that’s OK, I’m just getting a little tired of calling to let you know there’s a problem”. He said “oh, has this happened before”. And I said “it happens all the time and not just to you, but to the other Portland stations as well, but thank you and have a good night”. He was very pleasant, this guy, but really would not have understood why I was upset. He’s not part of the problem.

It is simply unbelievabe to me that I, as a regular joe who has no experience in broadcast television, needs to call my local affiliate to tell them that their HD feed is not working and to ask them to flip the switch. It is ridiculous.

Audio and Video don’t match up (out of synch) in High Definition

Response courtesy of Doug Finck (WPXT, WPME) - explanation of "out of synch" voice issues I pointed out to them by writing to the station. Keep in mind that this is a technical explanation but the bottom line is that when the audio and video is out of synch, it is not your television, it is the broadcaster. So your best bet is to call the station to let them know.

We have a digital processor that feeds the encoder. In the
digital processor we have a number of cards that upconvert non-high definition
signals, or pass through legitimate high definition signals, depending upon what
we are feeding.

Our engineers check out the system and we were off by 9 frames. In other words, our audio was 9 frames ahead of our video (the sound was coming before the mouths were moving). Given the fact that there are 30 frames per second, we were off by a about a third of a second. I appreciate you bringing it to our attention. We're a little baffled about how it could have gotten "out of sync."

We haven't added any new equipment or made any adjustments and it was perfectly sync-ed up the last time we tested. The one thing we wonder about is the PSIP data. That information is injected into our signal (as required by law) but we don't control it. We pay an outside company to create and deliver the data
stream to us, then we inject it into our system.

If they added (or deleted) a large amount of data, that may have had an impact on the timing of the audio and video.My question to our engineers is, "why did we not observe what you observed…the fact that the sound and the lips were out of
sync?" The answer is interesting.

We are currently broadcasting in both analog and digital. Each of our control rooms has a video monitor for the respective signals. The nature of analog is that whatever we do is seen immediately. In the digital world, however, everything is delayed by a few seconds. We fed our analog signal into the digital processor and it takes a second or two to convert the 525i, 4:3 analog image, into a 1080i, 16:9
digital image.

That delay causes both audio and video digital signals to be "behind" our analog signal. When the Master Control operators watch our monitors, they see both signals, but they only listen to the analog. The digital audio is several seconds behind the analog. The solution seems simply, watch and listen in digital to see if the sound and mouth movement is in sync. The problem with that is the delay would cause a problem whenever we went to a commercial, had to superimpose some information, or tried to start a new program. Because we would be watching a delayed feed, we would start the next element based on what we were watching…but that would have ended a few seconds before we saw it…so by watching the delayed digital feed, we would always have 2-3 seconds of black silence between any ad, show or event. The long-term answer is to say goodbye to analog. Once we are in a pure digital realm, we will no longer be upconverting (which is where the delay occurs) and the digital feed will be in "real time" and we can monitor and switch off of that. In the meantime, we'll keep an eye on things and I would ask that you do the same…and keep us honest!One final request.

We have adjusted the timing so everything is in sync right now. That's fine
because everything we're broadcasting is being upconverted. Our next
network high definition program will be on Sunday night. Do me a favor,
take a look and make sure that the network high definition is in sync. It
doesn't get converted and I hope that the adjustments we made to the processor
don't have any impact on the network high definition broadcasts! Thanks and have great weekend,